The following June, a year to the week after Tom’s last cutting, we put up the north eighty again.
It was a good year, wet in spring, warm in May, and the grass came on thick and sweet. Arlen’s nephew ran the baler. Gene brought his own tractor and showed up uninvited, and Ben drove the rake. Dwayne, who had come every Saturday through the winter and had quietly kept coming through the spring, worked the stackyard beside me, loading bales onto the flatbed with a steady, uncomplaining rhythm.
Marlene brought lunch. Ada sat in a lawn chair under the cottonwoods, with a blanket over her knees and a hat on her head, watching her two sons work.
At noon, we all sat in the shade of the barn. There were nine of us. Ben sat beside me with a sandwich in one hand, and Dwayne sat across, and the young Reyes couple, who’d become friends, had brought a casserole and a baby in a basket. Arlen told the story of the winter of ’78, when a blizzard buried his barn and he dug out the cows with a snow shovel and a prayer. Gene corrected him on three points. The baby cried, and was passed around.
